Sunday, 12 October 2014

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission will deploy its lander,
Philae, to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on
12 November.

Philae’s landing site, currently known as Site J, is located on the
smaller of the comet’s two ‘lobes’, with a backup site on the larger
lobe. The sites were selected just six weeks after Rosetta arrived at
the comet on 6 August, following its 10-year journey through the Solar
System

In that time, the Rosetta mission has been conducting an unprecedented
scientific analysis of the comet, a remnant of the Solar System’s
4.6 billion-year history. The latest results from Rosetta will be
presented on the occasion of the landing, during dedicated press
briefings.

The main focus to date has been to survey 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in
order to prepare for the first ever attempt to soft-land on a comet.

On October 7, 2014 [Manila time], active regions on the sun gave it the
appearance of a jack-o'-lantern. This image is a blend of 171 and 193
angstrom light as captured by the NASA-Solar Dynamics Observatory.
NASA/GSFC/SDO

Source: GMANews

It looks like the Moon isn't the only heavenly body giving the skies a creepy feel this month.

After
last Wednesday's "Blood Moon" comes the "Pumpkin Sun" as captured by
the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration last Wednesday,
October 8.

Last Wednesday, the moon took on a blood-colored appearance during a total lunar eclipse.

"Active
regions on the sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern’s
face on Oct. 8, 2014. The active regions appear brighter because those
are areas that emit more light and energy – markers of an intense and
complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the
corona," NASA's Goodard Space Flight Center said.

Much fanfare accompanied the Sept. 25, 2010, launch of the Air
Force’s Space Based Space Surveillance satellite. The $833 million craft
was finally going up to do its job: monitor orbiting items from space
itself, free of the time constraints and atmospheric interference that
hamper its earthbound counterpart, the Space Fence. Its 30-centimeter
telescope, mounted on a two-axis gimbal, would help keep tabs on
satellites as far away as geosynchronous orbit as well as thousands of
bits of space junk closer in. The builders said SBSS would be on the job
within 60 days, and forecast a working life of at least 5½ years.

Shortly
after launch, the satellite passed over the South Atlantic, and things
went awry. The satellite was hit by radiation that sent the sensors
reeling and knocked out an electronics board payload. Suddenly, the
expensive, specially-designed satellite could no longer do what it was
built for.